The
Board of Directors of MPPA held a special meeting on Saturday, March l9th,
2005, at 4 p.m. at President Landenberger’s home.Present at this meeting were Jane Landenberger, Treasurer Derek Hunt,
Directors Sandra Brown, John Hughes, Gerald Rogoff and Brian Wicenski,
Ex-officio Fred Kaufman and Secretary Elizabeth Brown.Vice President Bob Brown had made the Board aware prior to this me

eting that he would be unable to
attend due to a previous commitment.

Jane
Landenberger stated the purpose ofthe
meeting was to discuss some concerns Bob Brown has regarding MPPA’s
nomination process of officers for election. In an e-mail to Jane, he said he
was unclear as to how the process works and also asked if a formal Nominating
Committee would be appointed.Bob
had further mentioned he believes that there is need to refocus our vision.

Prior
to this meeting, board members had reviewed MPPA Bylaws and Articles of
Agreement, and had either come to the meeting with suggestions or had
submitted in writing their thoughts on the nominating process and possible
bylaw changes.

Since
Brian Wicenski could only be in attendance for the first part of this meeting,
Jane called on him to discuss his thoughts.Brian stated it was his understanding that Bob was confused by the
election process of officers and after reviewing the bylaws himself, he could
certainly understand why.The
bylaws are somewhat vague and kind of confusing on elections, and say nothing
about succession.Defining job
descriptions would also help.Brian
had brought with him and passed out to each member a handwritten copy of three
models he put together that possibly could be used as a guideline for the
election of officers (copy attached).He
briefly went over three suggested models as follows:

Model
#l -The Vice President is
nominated and elected with theunderstanding that he/she will serve as Vice President, then
President, thenPast President.The Past President (Director #5), will also head a Nominating
Committee.This model has a
person committed to 3 years.

Derek
Hunt reminded Brian the President serves a two-year term of office as
President, so the person would actually be committed to 4 years rather than 3.

Model
#2 -Each person is elected with
President moving to Past President.President®Past
President (Director #5)®Serving
as Chairperson of Nominating
Committee.This model has a
person committed to 3 years.

Model
#3 -Each person is elected.No automatic Vice President®President.Vice President is also Chairperson for Nominating Committee.This model has a Nominating Committee Chairpersoncommitting to one year.It
also eliminates the problem if the Past President cannot serve.The Nominating Committee Chairperson would be responsible for forming
this Committee.

Suggestions:Bylaw changes-

Add:The Vice President will become President.

Add:The Vice President serves as Nominating Committee Chairperson.

Strike
the word “Chairman” under Section 2. Duties and
Responsibilities.(a) The
Directors shall annually elect a Chairman.It was noted that the word “Chairman” is not mentioned
anywhere else in the bylaws.

Brian
also suggested that perhaps a way to stimulate more interest from those
Association members or pond residents not currently participating would be to
increase the number of events held during the year.While the three or four social events currently held are all good, it
might be wise to hold several smaller events encouraging participation from
people who are not necessarily here every weekend, or have the time to be
involved in long lasting projects or committees.He named several different types of events such as nature walks,
conservation, clean-up walks, education, boating, environment, etc.He suggested that we could put out invitations to people to help on
little things, using this as an avenue to seek out new people with fresh
ideas, and involve them in smaller tasks of the Association.Brian also felt that perhaps we needed to discipline
ourselves to stay on track in dealing with issues at board meetings.

Before
leaving the meeting, Brian also reported to the Board that the Sunapee Area
Watershed Coalition has changed its meetings from the 4th Thursday
to the lst Thursday of the month.Jane
thanked Brian for sharing his thoughts with us.

The
Board discussed the above suggestions and decided that we should give it more
thought, go home, review the bylaws again, and come back to the next meeting
ready to discuss all suggestions, including those sent out to people prior to
this meeting.

Gerry
Rogoff discussed the need to include part-timers on the Board.It is his hope that we will make it easier for part-timers to
participate by allowing them to take part in meetings by phone if they are
unable to attend.He mentioned
that the board has been accommodating him by making it convenient for him to
attend meetings and he hopes that this flexibility for part-timer involvement
will be continued.Gerry feels it
is very important to include part-timers in order for the Board to be truly
representative of the whole Messer Pond community.

The
members around the table agreed that Brian’s suggestion to discipline
ourselves to address an issue, solve it, and stay on track was important.

Everyone
agreed that job descriptions need to be better defined.Derek Hunt suggested that each board member write two or three
paragraphs of exactly what their job entails, and bring that back to the next
meeting.

Names
that were discussed for a possible Nominating Committee consisted of Jane
Landenberger, Dick Cavallaro, Bob Brown and Fred Kaufman.

The
members discussed the importance of having Bob attend a meeting in the near
future to discuss his agenda with the Board.All agreed on several dates that will work for those present.The following dates were given to Jane to be passed on to Bob
so that a meeting can be planned around his schedule:

April
8, 9

April
15, 16(l6th
preferable to the l5th (Tax Day))

April
22, 23

Jane
will contact Bob and advise him that we would like to sit down and discuss his
questions and/or thoughts at his earliest convenience.